Can a large hard drive (3 TB) make Windows XP 32bit un-bootable?

As my old hard drive failed, I cloned the operating System (Windows XP SP3 32bit Professional) to a new hard drive (WD 3 TB).

It took several attempts, until it worked, but finally it was ok:

I had the following partitions on the drive:

1. ca. 100 GB for Windows XP
2. ca. 400 GB for data partition

I created a third one of about 500 GB, I’m not sure at the moment.

Anyway, I cloned Windows XP to the first partition and finally made it bootable. It worked.

The interesting thing: in the Windows XP Disk Management Utility, the 3 TB disk was shown as 745 GB!

Then I wanted to add another partition. I booted from Linux Mint 17 (which is on another physical drive in the same computer), used gparted to add 2 more partitions on the disk. I had read that Windows XP was limited to 2,2 TB hard disk size, so I added 2 partitions of about 500 and 600 GB. All 4 partitions together were still below 2 TB!

I used the new partitions from within Linux to make an image of the original (failing) hard drive.

Afterwards I booted again and Windows XP was no longer able to startup and crashed with a bluescreen only one moment after displaying the black screen with the Windows logo on it:

error code: 0x0000007B (0xB84C3524, 0xC0000034, 0x00000000)

I tried to fix the mbr again (with the Windows98 boot CD which had worked before) but no chance.

my questions

• Is it possible that creating the additional partitions was the reason for Windows to not boot any more?
• Is it because I’ve created them with gparted in Linux - could that damage the boot information on the first sectors?
• If I convert the 2 partitions back to “unallocated space” (as they were before), is there a significant chance to make Windows boot again?
  (I have 500 GB data on the 4th partition, to it will take some time to move them to another disk and my first attempt of copying the image failed, so I'd like to know if it makes sense to remove those partitions again)
• How much of the disk can I use in Windows XP Prof. 32bit?
• Is there a way to use the rest of the disk in Linux but let Windows ignore it?

Additional information

sudo parted /dev/sdb GNU Parted 2.3 Using /dev/sdb Welcome to GNU  
Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands. (parted) unit Unit?   
[compact]? B (parted) print Model: ATA WDC WD30EZRX-00D (scsi) Disk  
/dev/sdb: 3000592982016B Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B  
Partition Table: msdos  

Number  Start           End             Size           Type     File  
system  Flags  1      32256B          104858648575B   104858616320B   
primary  ntfs           boot  2       104858648576B   566232088575B    
461373440000B  primary  ntfs  3       566232088576B   1142948888575B   
576716800000B  primary  ntfs  4       1142948888576B  1772094488575B   
629145600000B  primary  ntfs  

testdisk ouput:

> sudo testdisk /dev/sdb
> 
> TestDisk 6.14, Data Recovery Utility, July 2013 Christophe GRENIER
> <grenier@cgsecurity.org> http://www.cgsecurity.org
> 
> Disk /dev/sdb - 3000 GB / 2794 GiB - CHS 364801 255 63
>      Partition               Start        End    Size in sectors  
>       MS Data                       63  204802039  204801977
>       MS Data                       71  204802047  204801977
>       MS Data                     2046 1024002045 1024000000 [home]
>       MS Data                204802047  409604023  204801977
>       MS Data                267056004 1105922047  838866044
>       MS Data                976566272 2048002047 1071435776
>       Mac HFS               1054259368 1054290799      31432
>       MS Data               1105922047 1944788090  838866044
>       MS Data               2048002047 3119437822 1071435776
>       MS Data               3019972479 3157858310  137885832
>       MS Data               3157858310 3295744141  137885832      
>       P Mac HFS             3326382782 3328512703    2129922      
>       P Mac HFS             3330438950 3332568871    2129922  
>       P Mac HFS             3343736868 3343856537     119670      
>       P Mac HFS             3362854468 4338955811  976101344   

>Structure: Ok.  Use Up/Down Arrow keys to select partition.
> Use Left/Right Arrow keys to CHANGE partition characteristics:
> P=Primary  D=Deleted Keys A: add partition, L: load backup, T: change
> type, P: list files, Enter: to continue NTFS, blocksize=4096, 104 GB / 97 GiB

The reason XP shows the disk as 745 GB has to do with the limits of MBR partitioning (XP does not support GPT partitioning). With MBR partitioning you can only have 2^32 blocks of 512 bytes each; that is about 2 TB, hence the 2 TB limit.

Worse: Even before any partition table entries are created, the 3 TB drive's capacity is reported by the drive as 0x15D3EF798 blocks (of 512 bytes each). Note that that number is 33 bits wide. XP ignores the 33rd bit (the "1" after "0x"), leaving you with 0x5D3EF798 blocks = 1,564,407,704 (decimal) blocks = 800,976,744,448 bytes.

XP reports this as about 745 GB (since XP reports disk capacity in "binary gigabytes", where one "GB" = 1,073,741,824 bytes - they should be saying "GiB", but that's just my personal opinion).

So as far as XP is concerned any partition table entries that go beyond that point (like the third one in the parted output) can't be correct, as they describe places on the drive that it doesn't think exist.

The complete extent of what gparted did to the disk is not clear to me, but the testdisk output shows a partition table that can only be described as "corrupted", given the partitions you thought you were creating. Not only are there apparently a great many partitions, but many of the entries apparently overlap each other.

Is it possible that creating the additional partitions was the reason for Windows to not boot any more?

Yes.

Is it because I’ve created them with gparted in Linux - could that damage the boot information on the first sectors?

Yes.

If I convert the 2 partitions back to “unallocated space” (as they were before), is there a significant chance to make Windows boot again?

Maybe. I don't think you have much to lose at this point.

(I have 500 GB data on the 4th partition, to it will take some time to move them to another disk and my first attempt of copying the image failed, so I'd like to know if it makes sense to remove those partitions again)

I think you had better move that data to another disk.

How much of the disk can I use in Windows XP Prof. 32bit?

I wouldn't use it on XP at all. I would try to find a nice safe 2 TB disk. If you must use this one, stick to the first 745 GB (as reported by XP) and you should be fine.

Is there a way to use the rest of the disk in Linux but let Windows ignore it?

I doubt it. To use it on XP you have to use MBR partitioning, and MBR partition table entries with LBAs above 745 GB or so (i.e. "using the rest of the disk") are likely causing the problem.

You could use it as a data disk (second disk) under Windows Vista or later... or an OS disk if your machine has UEFI firmware.